Google and Microsoft Are Fighting. But a Battle May Loom between Coveo and Service Now

March 18, 2021

The 2021 cage match line ups are interesting. The Google – Microsoft dust up is a big deal. Google says Microsoft is using its posture on news as a way to blast rock and roll fog around the egregious security breaches for SolarWinds and Exchange Server.

But that fog could obscure a bout between Coveo (a smart search company) and Service Now (a Swiss Army knife of middleware, including Attivio search. Both companies invoke the artificial intelligence moniker. Both covet enterprise customers. Both want to extend their software into large organizations.

Service Now makes it plans clear in “Service Now Adds New AI and Low-Code Development Features.” The write up states:

[A user conference in Quebec] … also introduces AI Search, underpinned by technology acquired in ServiceNow’s purchase of Attivio. AI Search delivers intelligent search results and actionable information, complementing Quebec’s Engagement Messenger that extends self-service to third-party portals to enable AI search, knowledge management, and case interactions. Also new in Quebec is the aforementioned virtual agent, which delivers AI-powered conversational experiences for IT incident resolution.

From my vantage point, the AI is hand waving. Search has quite a few moving parts, and human involvement is necessary whether smart software is involved or not.

What Service Now has, however, is a meta-play; that is, it offers numerous management services. If properly set up and resourced could reduce the pain of some utility functions. Search is the mother of all utility services.

Coveo is a traditional enterprise search vendor. The company has targeted numerous business functions as likely customers; for example, customer support and marketing.

But niche vendors of utilities have to be like the “little engine that could.”

This may not be the main event like Google versus Microsoft, but it will be an event to watch.

Stephen E Arnold, March 18, 2021

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under News, Online (general), Search

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.